Annalee Newitz

These days, director David Cronenberg does Oscar-style fare like A History of Violence, but back in the 1980s he made splattery body horror cheesefests. Scanners is one of the best of the lot, giving us a spooky, memorably gross, look at the lives of outcast telepaths who were the victims of government experiments. Also, there were a lot of exploding heads. Now, Weinstein Co.'s Dimension Films is producing a TV series based on Cronenberg's weird flick.

The original plan was to mount a theatrical remake, with David Goyer tapped to write two drafts, and Rene Malo, Clark Peterson and Pierre David signed as producers. But with the recent resurgence of genre TV dramas like AMC's monster hit The Walking Dead, Dimension started also considering a small-screen adaptation. According to insiders, it was Dimension principal Bob Weinstein and Aja who conceived of the plan to transform the Scanners property into a TV show.

Another one of Cronenberg's films, The Dead Zone, was a successful TV series in the early 2000s.